


Caregiver

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Midnighters Timestamps [5]
Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cuddles, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protection, Sickfic, fretting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 12:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4221927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I wouldn’t sleep anyway,” Nigel says, lifting a hand before Adam can apologize. “I couldn’t make myself if I fucking wanted to, darling, not - not now. What if you need more ice? It could fucking melt and then you’ve just got a goddamn mug of water. That’s no fucking good, is it? Or if you’re hungry or want a bath. This is no time to fucking sleep, Adam.”</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>Adam just smiles, watching this man, rough and raw and strong, fret over him like a mother hen. He loves Nigel very much, he loves the way he is despite some things he does not agree with himself. That's what love is, really, in the end, isn’t it?</i>
</p>
<p>Adam gets sick, and Nigel frets. Suggested by a lovely anon over on our <a href="http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/">blog</a>!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caregiver

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd. All mistakes are our own :)

It’s a fucking rare day when Nigel wakes up first.

He can remember few instances when it’s ever happened. Squinting at the ceiling, he tries to recall even once, and tires of the exercise before he can. It’s an even more surprising feat considering how late he was up the night before, watching all three hours of a show about tigers growing up. It was narrated by that funny English bastard that he likes so much, and they’d hooked the cameras up to elephants. Nigel congratulates himself again on not waking Adam to tell him.

He thought of Adam, often, when the tigers were little, clumsy and curious with big blue eyes.

He thought of himself when they were big, and grins, flattered by his own comparison.

So he seeks, now, for his little tiger. Sparrow. Both, Adam can be fucking both. He is, really, delicate and quick and fearsome and adorable, though he’d never say that aloud.

That’s a lie. Nigel tells him that he’s cute often, just to see Adam’s nose wrinkle in protest.

But he seeks anyway, nevermind all that shit, for the slight body beside his own. Adam’s skin is slick but Nigel snares him around the waist anyway, pulling Adam back against his chest and burying his nose in his hair with a rumble.

“Good morning, darling.”

Adam makes a fussy sound, curling up on himself but not squirming away from the hold. He is hot beneath the blanket, but he doesn’t try to get out to cool himself. It is, all in all, strange that Adam doesn’t immediately wake, doesn’t immediately turn to nuzzle into Nigel’s kisses and spread lazily in bed for the other man to devour him.

He is a tease, that boy, though he plays it so innocent.

Instead, Adam makes another of those annoyed sounds and tries to bury himself under the blankets further.

“Nigel,” he mumbles, fingers curling with Nigel’s before he lets him go, a gentle greeting and a warm one, but not an invitation. Though Nigel hardly needs one, with how long they have shared space and a bed and each other. He presses closer against him and sucks a hot kiss behind Adam’s ear.

“No,” Adam yawns, and nuzzles harder against the pillow. It is petulant, it is not angry.

Hard to get, then. Good.

Nigel's smile spreads and he draws his lips over Adam's shoulder instead. Bringing his hand up from Adam's soft little belly, Nigel strokes across his chest. Sweat wets his fingers and Nigel pauses. Another gentle, discomforted sound raises the short hairs on the back of his neck.

Not good.

"What's the matter, angel," he asks, teasing gently. "Are you tired of me?"

"No."

"You want me to fuck off?"

Adam turns his face into the pillow, and Nigel can't understand his muffled response. He takes his hands away but for one that cups beneath Adam's cheek, turning the kid to face him. His cheeks aren't flushed - they're fucking scarlet. Sweat holds his curls against his skin and his long lashes flutter, lips slightly parted. All these things should be arousing, on any normal day.

They're not now.

Nigel's brow creases. His world shifts from one of tigers to something far more human, and far more unpleasant.

"What's the matter, sparrow?"

“I’m really cold,” Adam mumbles, turning further over onto his back and then onto his other side as he curls close against Nigel, arms slipping beneath his so he can snuggle close. His skin burns, and Nigel can see the goosebumps on Adam’s skin.

Very not good.

“Are you feeling unwell, darling?”

“Just want to sleep,” Adam says, pressing his lips, hot, against Nigel’s throat and just clinging to him. He is sleepy and lethargic, hot with fever and trembling in erratic little bouts. Nigel wonders, for a moment, when he had started thinking of Adam as indestructible, as something and someone so above common humanity that Adam being sick comes as a shock, a genuine fucking surprise.

But then again, it is fucking winter.

Adam nuzzles closer and Nigel pulls the covers up over them both until Adam’s breathing evens out a little more and his lips part in sleepy respite.

Nigel watches. Every twitch of Adam’s eyelids, every purse of his lips, every bead of sweat that wells from his brow and slips down to soak into the pillow. He watches, and he worries. With careful touches, he smooths Adam’s hair back from his face, tucking a curl behind his ear. His reward is a fussy noise, and it only tightens the dread in Nigel’s stomach that much more.

If he’s got a fever, he shouldn’t be hot. It doesn’t stand to fucking reason that someone with a fever should be kept warmer than they already are. Nigel’s not a goddamn doctor thought - nor does he trust them as far as he can spit - so he settles beside Adam and tries to remember.

His childhood is a blur, mostly forgotten, mostly intentionally. He recalls the narrow, flat mattress he slept on as a kid, though, the rough Soviet-era blanket that sufficed as cover. Spurred by thoughts Nigel would have considered long forgotten, he sits up carefully and sets one wrist to Adam’s brow, and the other to his own.

He’s warm.

He’s very warm.

He’s fucking scalding.

“Darling,” Nigel whispers, urgent. “Adam, baby, I need you to wake up.”

“‘m awake,” Adam answers, but it isn’t good enough for Nigel. Adam’s voice croaks, not the sweet lilting thing that carries on and on in beautiful song and earned him Nigel’s favorite nickname, his little sparrow. It’s harsh, rough, choking back bile and that sound Nigel knows all too fucking well and _that_ sound he has _never_ wanted to hear from Adam.

“Angel, I’m going to the store,” he says, and it goes against every fiber of the man who wants nothing more than to put his fist into the wall in frustration. Nigel draws away slowly, inching to the edge of the mattress until he gets his feet under him, and then it’s a flurry. He snares pants off the floor, nevermind that he doesn’t know where his fucking boxers are. He grabs an undershirt and jerks it down over his head.

“What hurts, Adam?” Nigel asks, keeping his voice to a low rumble no matter how badly it pulls upward, desperate. “Tell me what’s bothering you so I can get something for you. Or call an ambulance. Please,” he begs, fighting against the curse words that shove against his tongue. Adam doesn’t like cursing. Nigel’s certainly not going to fucking do it when he’s unwell.

Adam smiles then, comforted by Nigel’s fretting, and reaches across the bed beneath the sheets as though to touch him. In truth, everything hurts. His bones burn, his skin feels scraped and raw, his head is both light and heavy at once and he's parched.

"Don't call an ambulance," Adam mumbles, splaying his fingers beneath the blanket before withdrawing his arm with a quiet hiss of discomfort. "I just have a fever. I feel sleepy -"

"Do you feel sick, baby?"

Adam nuzzles into the pillow, shaking his head. Nigel licks his lips and fumbles in his pockets to check for his cigarettes and lighter, his wallet, his burner.

"So a fever. Fu- okay. Okay." Nigel knows that he should offer more. He should know more. But his mind is just filled with a white noise of displeased panic at seeing Adam shiver and curl so helpless in bed. Taken over by a fucking illness that doesn't fucking belong here.

He bends low over Adam and sifts a hand through his hair. Touching a kiss to his temple, he lets his lips linger as if that might somehow draw the heat away. Adam trembles, shivering, and Nigel whispers a curse.

It’s in Romanian at least, rather than English.

“I’ll be gone five minutes, angel, not even that,” he promises. “Just around the corner and then back, okay?”

He waits until Adam nods before he goes.

And then it’s quick. Not slamming the door shut, closing it quietly, before Nigel barrels down the stairs and takes them two at a time down the stoop. He lights a cigarette as long strides carry him down the block, ducking a lady with a baby carriage, a garbage can, cursing with every breath that isn’t pulling fire into his lungs. He keeps time in his head, thirty seconds to the corner, one minute down the long block. The pharmacy door, automatic, opens slow enough to make him snarl before he realizes he’s still got his cigarette between his lips and he flings it out into the street.

Past the soda, past the condoms, his usual two stops when he’s here even though the latter now is most unnecessary. Careful not to bang his hands against the pharmacy counter, he places his hands flat.

“Adam is sick,” he tells the pharmacist, who quirks a brow. Nigel’s eyes narrow. “My -”

Boyfriend? No, that’s fucking childish.

Lover? No, too goddamn romance-novel, though Nigel would deny he’s ever read any of those.

“Partner,” Nigel decides. It sounds like business. “My partner is fucking sick. He’s got a fever.”

“Has he been to a doctor?”

“Has he fucking - no,” breathes Nigel. He stretches his neck and sets his jaw, pushing back from the counter. Setting a hand to the back of his neck, he tries to work out the frustration pulled painfully tight there, fingers spanning beneath the collar of his shitty white undershirt. “No. He’s got a fever.”

“Any other symptoms?”

“He’s fucking sweaty,” Nigel declares. “He’s making little sounds.”

The pharmacist, a pretty girl with dark hair knotted up on top of her head and thick-framed glasses, fights down a smile and furrows her brow.

“Sounds,” Nigel says again. “Small ones, noises like he’s hurting. He sounds like shit right now. He has a fucking beautiful voice and he sounds like he’s got fucking sandpaper in his throat. Please,” he manages, a fucking miracle at that, “just fucking give me something for him.”

She watches Nigel like someone watches an irritated cat pace the house, tail flicking and lips snarling back in not-quite-hisses at invisible slights. The tension in him is palpable, but like with any animal, wild, domesticated, or human, it is clear that fear out-balances anger in this case. She is not scared for herself.

"It sounds like he could have the beginnings of bronchitis -"

"Bron-what?"

"It's when the lungs fill up with mucus. Unpleasant but fairly common in winter. A doctor's visit wouldn't go amiss."

"He doesn’t fucking want -" Another breath to restrain his displeasure and Nigel groans it out instead. It has been, already, two minutes longer at the counter than fucking necessary. Slowly, she shakes her head, apologetic.

"There are only a few things I can give you over the counter that might work to ease it down, but without a prescription -"

“Give them to me,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Please. He won’t go to the fucking doctor, I told him I would call an ambulance and -”

“I don’t know if that’s necessary,” she responds, not unkindly, and certainly not without a glimmer of amusement. Before Nigel can spit out another curse, she turns to gather up a few over-the-counter options, presenting each to him with patiently-spoken instructions. He listens. Carefully. He listens because this is important and because he doesn’t want to have to drag Adam bodily from bed to find a doctor, but he fucking will if it comes to that.

Nigel hopes it doesn’t come to that.

Two or three days, she said, and if he’s not doing better by then he should go to a doctor. Two or three days seems like a fucking lifetime to Nigel when it’s two or three fucking days of Adam being unhappy, unwell, making those sad little sounds and sweating up the sheets. Nigel takes the stairs two-at-once again back up, little bag of pills clutched firmly in hand. A day, he decides. One day and if Adam’s not at least a little better, Nigel will carry Adam to the hospital himself.

The apartment is quiet and Nigel’s heart immediately goes to his throat as he kicks off his shoes and paces with long strides back to the bedroom. Adam is still in bed, breathing even but accompanied by a soft little rattling wheeze on every inhale.

Nigel moves to stroke his hair and Adam shivers at the touch, though he turns into it. His forehead is burning still, slick with clammy sweat. He mumbles Nigel’s name and opens his eyes, bright and wide with fever. He looks unwell but not in pain, not in genuine pain. At least Nigel hopes. Fuck, he hopes.

"I got some things, love," Nigel tells him, reaching for the bag to tip it to the bed by Adam so he can look. "To bring your fever down and to work that fucking mucus out of you, and -"

"Some of these have to be taken with food," Adam gently interrupts, watching Nigel from so close. "I didn't make breakfast today..."

Nigel sucks in a sharp breath and holds it. He should have made breakfast already for Adam. He should have known and made something and then gone or gone earlier and then had something made now or woken up and -

He shakes his head to try and quiet the irrational jangling thoughts, setting the boxes of medicine aside and standing once more. A wide, flat hand rubs slow along Adam’s arm, scarred knuckles up his cheek, fingers in his hair.

“I’ll make breakfast,” he declares with all the solemnity of a man volunteering for war. “Not fucking cereal, though, okay? Maybe after, but you’ve got to eat something better for you than that first. You’re going to have eggs. And toast.”

If they have eggs.

If they have toast.

Adam frowns but doesn’t protest. Nigel knows Adam doesn’t like eggs, but they would be hot, they would have more vitamins or whatever than a bowl of sugary cereal with fucking two-percent. 

He knows that first, they need that fucking fever to go down. Whatever meds he can feed Adam for that to happen he will. Whatever else he can find to do he will. Just as long as his little sparrow is healthy again. He hesitates to part again but does anyway. 

Adam needs to take the meds but he needs to eat before he can.

The process is logical enough.

"I will be right fucking here," Nigel tells him. "Just outside the fucking door and in the kitchen."

"That's thirteen paces from the door," Adam tells him quietly, and turns to cough into the pillow, groaning after and turning his head against the pillow. Nigel notices that Adam has migrated from his side of the bed to Nigel’s. His words pull hard at Nigel’s heart.

“Still well enough to be a smart-ass, aren’t you,” he smiles, but it slips away when no answer comes.

Nigel tries to keep quiet in the kitchen, careful not to bang any cabinets or slam the refrigerator. He starts coffee once the toast is toasting, he drinks it while he tries to pick out a bit of eggshell from the scramble sizzling in the skillet. Every other minute he paces back to peek into the bedroom to assure himself that Adam is still there, still breathing. It isn’t fancy food, but few things they do together could ever qualify as fancy. It’s heavy, though, satisfying - he hopes.

He brings the plate to Adam’s bedside and recalls that Adam said he was thirsty.

Adam was thirsty even before Nigel went to the fucking pharmacy.

“ _Pula mea_ ,” he hisses, pivoting back to the kitchen.

Nigel snatches down a glass, but stops. If Adam is hot, he might want cold water. If he’s cold, maybe not. Adam is fucking both, apparently, a constant goddamn paradox and so Nigel takes down another glass as well. One gets packed with ice cubes, usually reserved for special occasions such as Nigel deciding to fancy up his whiskey in a glass or Adam’s soda being too warm. A trickle of water fills around them. The other is finally filled with only water, once Nigel has stood in front of the sink for an inordinate amount of fucking time to make sure it’s perfectly lukewarm.

He brings back both.

“Darling,” he murmurs. “I brought water for you. I didn’t know what kind you wanted so I got both but -”

Adam looks up, having propped himself against the headboard to start eating, too tired and unwell to care that he is eating in bed when on any other day he would wince at the thought. He smiles, eyes warm, fond, exhausted, and licks his lips clean of crumbs and oil.

"The cold water will hurt my teeth because I'm eating hot food," Adam explains, hurrying to continue when Nigel presses his lips into the familiar shape of the beginning of his favorite fricative. "But if I drink too quickly I will get sick, my stomach is sensitive and my diaphragm is too tight from the coughing and the only way I will be able to drink will be from sucking the ice."

Adam takes another bite of toast and chews carefully, watching Nigel watch him with a mixture of awe and amusement. He still holds his lip against his teeth, but when he sighs out he doesn't swear. He just sets the glasses down.

A shadow of tension flickers of Nigel’s jaw, once.

“How will you take the fu- the pills, darling, how will you take them if you can only suck ice?”

Adam pauses with the toast against his teeth. “I’ll swallow them.”

“You said your throat is tight.”

“My diaphragm.”

“Not your throat.”

“No,” Adam answers, touching a hand to his stomach. “Here.”

“And you need that to swallow.”

“Mostly to breathe.”

Nigel closes his eyes and forces a long breath. When he opens them again, it is to take both glasses back out into the kitchen. He considers straining out the water from the glass with ice, but it’s old ice now. It’s started to melt a little. If Adam can only have ice, then Nigel is going to make sure he has fresh fucking ice. He depletes the second tray of cubes to fill the biggest cup he can find, a beer mug he brought back from Germany with a scantily clad Oktoberfest girl emblazoned on it, her skirt upturned. If he’s honest, he doesn’t remember buying it so much as finding it in his bag when he got back.

Doesn’t matter.

He fills past the brim with ice, refills the trays again, and returns.

Adam has set the plate back to the side table again, meal half-finished, and is sorting through the medicine Nigel had dumped out onto the sheets. He selects two bottles and sets them away before reaching to carefully arrange the others on the bedside table too.

Nigel's side. His table.

The man could not care fucking less. He just watches as Adam takes two pills from one, one from another, and swallows them dry. He reaches to take a piece of ice gratefully and sucks it between his lips until it melts down his fingers and along his throat. Only then does he lie back and squirm over to his side of the bed again.

"I'm going to be drowsy," Adam tells him. "And I will cough and have a fever and you won't get any sleep. I'm sorry."

“You’re - you’re fucking sorry?” Nigel laughs, eyes wide. Adam frowns at the curse, watching as Nigel brings a knee to Adam’s side of the bed, and then the other. He crawls closer and sinks heavy into the mattress alongside him, not touching - he doesn’t know if Adam wants to be touched or not, if he’s too hot or if contact with his skin will pull more of those pained little kitten noises from him again. But he stays close, he stays close and he watches as water wells from the cube between Adam’s lips and beads down his chin.

“I wouldn’t sleep anyway,” Nigel says, lifting a hand before Adam can apologize. “I couldn’t make myself if I fucking wanted to, darling, not - not now. What if you need more ice? It could fucking melt and then you’ve just got a goddamn mug of water. That’s no fucking good, is it? Or if you’re hungry or want a bath. This is no time to fucking sleep, Adam.”

Adam just smiles, watching this man, rough and raw and strong, fret over him like a mother hen. He loves Nigel very much, he loves the way he is despite some things he does not agree with himself. That's what love is, really, in the end, isn’t it?

"I took something to sleep, so I will fall asleep again soon. My body needs to fight the virus in it and sleep is clinically proven and known to help with that process. I will be sleeping often. If you stay up the entire time you will get sick too. Then who will look after me and you together?"

“I won’t get sick,” Nigel declares, as stubborn about this as everything else. He tracks the movement of Adam’s hand as he takes up another ice cube to press between his lips, and watches the thin trail forming down his throat. “Besides,” he says, “if I do, then the virus will come live in me instead. Fuck it.”

Hooded eyes, bright blue, blink slowly, and a smile twitches wider as Adam shakes his head. “That isn’t how viruses work at all.”

“Why the fuck not? If it leaves you and comes to stay in my lungs,” he shrugs, before rolling to his back with an arm across his eyes and lifting the blanket with the other for Adam to slide beneath again. “It would probably choke to death on all the smoke anyway.”

Adam’s lips part in silent shock and protest both, ice dripping from his fingers. He slowly sets it in his mouth against his cheek before shuffling to lay prone again. In an instant, Nigel is around him, a leg and both arms, one curled beneath his neck and the other over his side. He sets his chin atop Adam’s head and huffs, a pleased sound no matter how much the heat of Adam’s skin worries him in a way that no amount of bravado can overcome.

“Viruses can live in more than one person,” Adam explains. “They reproduce and spread. I’m going to cough on you, and they’ll carry over - it’s called droplet transfer, saliva is a vector -”

“Fuck vectors, Adam.”

"That isn't how they work either," Adam laughs, the sound turning into a cough that shakes his little form. Nigel holds him tighter, brows drawn in concern and displeasure both that his little sparrow is so sick and he can do nothing but weather the storm with him.

He sets a hand to Adam’s forehead and the other moans, breath wheezing in and out of his throat.

"That feels good," he murmurs, wriggling back against Nigel fully, cocooned in warmth and comfort and familiarity with Nigel so near. He says nothing for a good long while, and then his wheezy little breaths grow slower and deeper, and Nigel knows he's sleeping.

He curses the fact that he can't help. That he can't go out and beat the damn thing up for even looking twice at his boy. He knows that's crazy. He knows that no matter how much he hates it he can't do anything but hold Adam close and keep him comfortable. 

He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

\---

"The cough isn't fucking going away," Nigel snarls. "It's getting fucking worse."

"Bronchitis isn’t a quick-fix illness," the girl behind the counter says, brows up. "Medications take time to work, the virus needs time to be eradicated from the body."

“Bullshit.”

She blinks.

“Bullshit it takes time,” Nigel says. “You told me those fucking pills would fix him.”

“No,” she answers, patient, endlessly patient but for the flick of a tongue against her lips in a hint of annoyance. “I told you that he should see a physician.”

“And then what?”

“And then they’re probably going to tell you the same thing,” she says with a slight shrug. “There isn’t an antibiotic for viruses. They just have to pass on their own time and you were only in here yesterday.”

One day. One fucking day of Adam being unwell is too many. Nigel spent the better part of it in anxious worry, attempting to sleep when he could, but more often watching Adam as his eyes moved beneath his lids and he made soft little sounds and coughed. Nigel took all the ashtrays out to the balcony, smoked his cigarettes there, changed shirts when he came back in so not even the lingering smell of it would risk Adam feeling worse. The rattling breaths and broken-voiced requests for ice or food were met as urgently as Nigel humanly could and even still -

“It’s not fucking enough,” he seethes. “He doesn’t even want to read his fucking space books.”

She sighs and turns to find another medication that might ease the symptoms, that Nigel carries back gripped so tightly the box is crumpled by the time he’s back in the apartment.

In truth, when he stops to think about it - fucking rarely between worrying over every little breath and moan - Nigel can tell that Adam has not gotten _worse_. He’s just hardly gotten better. He coughs a lot, squirms in bed when he’s sleeping and when he isn’t, apologizes over and over to Nigel for silly things like moving too much or wheezing or sweating on the sheets.

It doesn’t matter, none of that fucking matters as long as Adam gets better, as long as Nigel can fucking help beyond helplessly watching.

Now, Adam is sitting up, propped on pillows to keep his cough a little more under control. There are mugs around him half-filled with lemon honey drinks and soothing teas, melted water which had been cubes of ice before… things that were Adam feeling like himself, he would hate seeing here, messy and out of place.

He coughs when Nigel comes into the room, but his smile is genuine. He’s always been affectionate but in this state he clings to Nigel like a child, nuzzling and pressing close, seeking a comfort in him, a protection the man has proven he will always provide.

“Did you yell at the pharmacist again?”

“Fucking right.”

Nigel sees the little curl of energy wrap pleasantly through Adam’s body as he comes closer. Adam brings up a knee, clenches his toes, spreads his fingers. An unrestrained movement as if pulled towards Nigel magnetically. And he watches as even that sweet tension twists tighter and tighter, until Adam’s coughing into his hand again, and Nigel sets the box of medication on the bedside table to stop himself from crushing it in his fist. 

He slinks across the bed, ignoring Adam’s wave to stay back, and he tugs the kid against his chest. Broad strokes up and down his back ease the coughing in bits and pieces, but to feel Adam’s body wracked tight this way, to feel him tremble aching from the strain of it…

The wild and alarmingly serious thought crosses Nigel’s mind that he would rather be sick unto fucking death before he saw Adam like this again.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs against Adam’s hair, cradling him closer to let Adam cough against his chest. “Get it out, darling, just try to breathe for me, yeah? Can you take a breath? Will you go to the fucking doctor now, sparrow?”

Adam shakes his head, buries his face against Nigel’s chest and tries to catch his breath. It is never about the money, they have enough to set Adam up in a private hospital in his own room with a skyline fucking view if they wanted. It is the fact that they no longer use their real names on anything but the mortgage payments, and even then Nigel is still an alias.

It is the fact that Adam would panic at the hospital, that it would make the coughing worse, it would make it impossible for the doctors to come near him.

Not worth it.

"The fever has broken and the rest is waiting," Adam tells him. He can feel every breath he takes, rattling in his lungs. He has gone through bottles of liquid medicine for a wheezing cough.

"Fuck waiting," Nigel mumbles, but he knows as well as Adam does that they can do little more than fucking wait. He just hates it. Adam nuzzles closer and presses his sweaty palms to Nigel’s chest.

Nigel runs a hand over Adam’s fingers and traces bird-fine bones beneath. His other arm encircles the kid, thumb stroking his arm. He adjusts only to bring his legs to either side of Adam, and let him curl closer still, hushing him softly when Adam fusses. Head back against the wall, he watches the ripples of little shivers and the goosebumps that follow. He notes that Adam isn’t sopping with sweat anymore, for whatever fucking good that’s worth.

“Do you want me to read to you?” He asks. “One of your space books? I can’t pronounce anything in them but I’m sure you’ll correct me,” he adds, teasing.

Adam shakes his head, and Nigel eases a little when he feels the slight smile against his chest. “I don’t want you to go again.”

The word wounds and Nigel squeezes him a little closer.

“I won’t go again,” he agrees, touching a kiss to Adam’s hair. He breathes him in, unable to discern much more than stale air and old sweat and sickness - god fucking knows Nigel blew out his sense of smell a long time ago. But he’s warm, Adam, he’s always so warm and Nigel lets his kiss linger to feel that familiar heat.

“I have a confession,” Nigel says, after a few moments pass. “Do you remember our first job together?”

“The warehouse security system. I remember.”

“Of course you do,” he smiles. He thinks of quick fingers and sharp eyes, a cleverness almost alarming but for the fact that Adam himself has always been so unaware of it. Dark hair and lips sticky with orange soda. “I kissed you.”

“On the top of my head,” Adam agrees. “You said you were just fu-... grateful. I said kissing was for affection, and you said no, that it was the same as kissing family, not like kissing a girl.”

Nigel’s grin widens, and he lets his eyes close. He breathes a laugh before he can stop himself and lifts a hand to smooth Adam’s hair back from his face, touching a kiss to his brow.

“That’s my confession,” he murmurs, amused. “I was lying through my fucking teeth.”

Adam frowns in thought and replays the day in his mind again, like a film reel. He thinks of the adrenaline and the tension, he thinks of the elation at having succeeded. He thinks of how nice it had felt to be kissed, even when Nigel had denied It later.

He smiles and just lets that stay in his mind. It was nice and warm and gentle then, and even fuelled by all kinds of hormones, Nigel had chosen to do it. He had chosen Adam despite his peculiarities. 

"You can't lie to me," Adam murmurs, grinning. "I always know. I knew then, too."

“I had to fucking threaten you to make you stop arguing with me.”

“I still knew.”

“I could tell,” Nigel laughs - his cheeks hurt from smiling so much, his heart unspirals its ache at feeling Adam’s gentle humor return to him. “You get that fucking look in your eye -”

“I don’t have a look.”

“You do. Like this.” Adam lifts his head to watch Nigel, who narrows his eyes in a doubtful way, pushing his mouth to one side.

“I don’t do that at all, I would know if I did,” Adam grins. Nigel spans a hand across Adam’s cheek, flushed now from something other than fever.

“I loved you right away,” decides Nigel. “I must have. How could I fucking not?” He slips back further, until only his shoulders are propped up, and Adam lays heavy against his chest. “I think I just needed time to realize it. I’m a bit fucking thick, sometimes.”

"I love you anyway," Adam sighs, voice already thick with sleep as he turns his head against Nigel and settles against the steady beating of his heart. He doesn’t hear if Nigel replies to him, but it hardly matters by then. He is safe and warm and comfortable. He has Nigel.

\---

The girls looks up and narrows her eyes as Nigel stomps back to the pharmacy. Day in, day out he’s come here to swear and agitate himself before leaving with whatever other medications she could think of to even remotely help his boyfriend.

"Look,” she sighs. "I -"

"He's better," Nigel says, setting his hands to the counter and tapping his fingers impatiently against it. "The fucking fever is gone and he can finally fucking breathe for more than a fucking gasp. I just -"

Nigel’s brows furrow and he huffs a breath, raising dark eyes to the girl who watches him with crossed arms. She had never been rude, even when Nigel had threatened all kinds of holy hell. More miraculously she had never once called the cops on him. Brave kid.

"Thanks for not telling me to fuck off."

She tries to stay stern and fight down the smile that tugs upward at this, but it appears anyway, just a hint.

“You’re welcome,” she says, bringing up a hand to raise her glasses. “Might work on your people skills a little, though. Just for the future.”

Nigel laughs then, just one loud note, before pushing back from the counter and shoving his hand through his hair. What does he have to be pissed about, really? Adam’s well enough that he declined another goddamn plate of eggs in favor of cereal, and when Nigel stepped out to smoke and decided to do this, Adam kissed him and went to take a shower. When Adam is happy, the rest of Nigel’s world just seems to settle into place.

“Not for lack of fucking trying,” he agrees. He turns to go - and pick up soda and two-percent milk on his way out - but she calls after him, grinning.

“I’m glad your boyfriend’s doing better.”

Nigel stops. He glances up and down the aisle to see if anyone has noticed or reacted, and the only other customer continues blithely surveying the toilet paper. Finally Nigel turns his dark gaze back to the pharmacist, a protest perched on his lips.

“He’s not -”

He stops again, and instead simply says:

“Thanks. Me too.”


End file.
